


Same Old Lang Syne

by JRW9699



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Angst, F/M, Heartbreak, Past Relationship(s), Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:15:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28295163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JRW9699/pseuds/JRW9699
Summary: It’s Christmas Eve in Midvale. For Oliver Queen and Kara Danvers it feels like a magical night, but reality generally fails to be a fairy-tale.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Oliver Queen
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	Same Old Lang Syne

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't listened to the song this fic is titled after I highly recommend you do that before or during reading. 
> 
> Merry Christmas everyone!

“Man, remind me why we had to stay in town that time forgot again?”

Oliver didn’t acknowledge the grumbling with an answer. Instead, he opted to grab the pillow he had been leaning on and hurled it across the room. The pillow slapped into Tommy’s face and he recoiled with a satisfying yelp. With little more effort than flicking off a fly, Oliver ducked Tommy’s retaliation throw, then held his hands up in a placatory gesture.

“We’re staying here because my parents own this house, and it’s a damn sight cheaper than trying to plow the rest of the way onto National City in this snowstorm and crashing the bus.”

Tommy shrugged. “You could have at least picked somewhere to stop that had an open bar. It’s Christmas Eve and I’m sober! This is a violation of my basic human rights!” 

Effectively silencing him, Diggle leant across the sofa and clipped Tommy around the ear. Sara scoffed with laughter at Tommy’s indignant cry of pain, then tangled herself back in Nyssa’s embrace. Oliver rolled his eyes fondly at the couple. Every time they went on tour Tommy and Diggle had to suffer months away from their wives, but Nyssa always came along with them. Of course, being their manager gave her a decent excuse.

“There are more important things than your alcoholism, Merlyn.” Diggle scolded affectionately.

“If there’s anything around here more important than my alcoholism, I want it caught and shot now.”

That drew a genuine laugh from Oliver.

Tommy’s assessment of Midvale wasn’t entirely inaccurate. The tiny little town was about the sleepiest place Oliver had ever come across, and it was doubly so during the Christmas season. Of course, the town square was always bustling with markets and the usual Christmas fair for most of the holiday season. But come Christmas Eve the whole town seemed to shut down until Boxing Day. He had spent a number of Christmases there over the years, it was part of the reason his parents had bought the holiday home. Despite all the usual bravado of the Queen Family Christmas was a time they had always tried to dedicate just to them, without any of the trappings of their usual life.

“Midvale isn’t exactly Star City, Tommy,” Oliver offered by way of explanation. “You’re not going to find any nightclubs around here.”

Tommy groaned. “I’m not asking for a nightclub, I’m not even asking for something fancy. Just one, measly, backstreet bar for me to get my drink on.”

“Oh my god you’re pathetic,” Oliver sighed and pushed himself to his feet. “Wallet.”

A grin lighting up on his face, Tommy fished a hand into the jacket he had left discarded over the back of the sofa and pulled out his wallet. He tossed it across the room and Oliver snatched it out of the air. For a moment, he went to put it in his pocket but paused and opened it up instead. A few too many times he had learnt that lesson the hard way. There was a stack of bills and both Tommy’s credit cards in plain view. When he stuffed the wallet into his pocket and looked up, Tommy fixed Oliver with a hurt look, a hand pressed over his heart.

“You wound me, Ollie. You really think I’d try and screw you like that?”

The resounding chorus of _yes_ from the other four occupants of the room made Tommy grin.

“Alright maybe I would.” 

Oliver shook his head and made for the door, snatching his jacket and a discarded rucksack along the way. “You owe me for this, Merlyn. I’m taking a delivery fee on this one.”

_XXX_

Midvale still looked exactly the same. It had been almost ten years since the last time Oliver had spent a Christmas there but everything he had remembered from that time had still been there. There was still a stupidly oversized tree for such a small town adorned in the middle of the town square, wrapped in lights and iridescent baubles. There was still the same faulty star atop the tree that had been in usage for at least two decades to Oliver’s knowledge, flickering in a way that had resisted every single attempt at repair, but that the people still refused to discard because of the tradition. There were still the scattering of wooden huts that made up the Christmas market, all of them shuttered up and nearly buried under the constant flurry of snow.

And still, the only shop that was still open that time on a Christmas Eve was the closest thing Midvale had to a supermarket. Supermarket was a misnomer, the whole building was smaller than the holiday home his parents owned on the edge of the town. Still though, it braved the brutal weather every year and held out until the last minute on Christmas Eve just in case any of the people of Midvale had forgotten something and needed a last minute shopping trip to save Christmas.

Oliver made a beeline for the backwall that constituted the liquor section of the store as soon as he entered. The warm flush from the heated interior battered down the biting cold of the snowfall outside. For a minute, Oliver paced up and down, eyes flickering over the meagre selection of alcohol before he made his choice. Rethinking, he jogged back to the entrance, grabbed a basket, and returned. With practiced efficiency Oliver packed a crate of craft beer, a six pack of Diggle’s beer of choice, and two bottles of the best scotch available, into the bascket.

He was halfway to the checkout when he stalled.

For a few seconds Oliver was ten years younger, the memory of a bubbly laugh and a familiar hand wrapped around his own, of blonde hair and eyes that reflected starlight.

Every rational piece of his brain screamed at him to walk away, to pretend he hadn’t seen her and get back to the house as quickly as he could. It wouldn’t be fair to talk to her. He had left with barely any explanation. Walked away without giving her a chance to walk with him. At the time Oliver had thought he was doing the best thing for them both. But he had come to accept that it wasn’t the truth. She had scared him, and he ran away before he could get hurt.

Before he could second guess himself, Oliver’s feet carried him the rest of the way into the frozen foods isle. He reached out with one hand and lightly touched her on the shoulder.

She turned around idly, almost as if she had been expecting the interruption to her shopping. Her gaze was eye level with his chest when she turned, and she had to look up to meet his eyes.

Kara hardly looked any different. There was a strange tugging in the pit of his stomach as Oliver’s eyes raked over her, picking up on each and every one of her features and comparing them to the girl he had known ten years ago.

For the briefest moment, there was a puzzlement in her expression. It took her a moment, but when it hit her eyes flew open wide.

Oliver found her momentary confusion endearing somehow. He knew he didn’t look anything like he had the last time he had seen Kara. Gone was the long, unruly hair he had insisted on wearing, sheared back to a short cropped cut. His face was also adorned with a modest beard that Oliver liked to think added a maturity to him he didn’t always feel he earned.

“Oliver?”

Without another beat of hesitation Kara sprung forward, arms spread wide in an attempt to hug him. Before she closed even half the distance, the oversized handbag that had hung loosely on her left arm slipped from her grasp. The contents of her bag split out to the ground in a series of almost painfully loud cracks and rattles.

A brief silence fell over them, the store around them matching the utter vacuum. Then, completely unbidden, the two of them doubled over in a fit of laughter. By the time he was able to control himself again, there were tears welling up in Oliver’s eyes.

“Let me help.”

Oliver was already crouched down, basket put to one side, and gathering up Kara’s dropped possessions before she answered. After a second, Kara followed suit with a practically whispered _thank you_. She held her bag open while Oliver gathered up the scattered items on the floor and placed them back in one by one.

That was something that had changed. Kara still carried a similar style over oversized tote style handbag, but ten years ago it had served a purpose. Even barely into her teen years Kara had insisted on carrying her laptop and notepads everywhere with her. Her passion to follow her cousin into journalism had seen to that. Not once had it been necessary in the quiet streets of Midvale, but every time Oliver had pointed it out to her Kara had laughed him off and insisted _“a good journalist is always ready to chase her story, Oliver.”_

The laptop and no less than two A4 notepads that Kara had carried everywhere were gone. Instead the only hint that she was the journalist she had wanted to be was a singular small notepad with a pen threaded through the coil binding.

It didn’t look particularly well-used.

“Thank you.” Kara echoed as the two got back to their feet.

There was a stretch of silence between them, neither entirely sure of what to say. Then, as if suddenly remember she had been in the middle of something, Kara turned on her heel and reached back into the freezer. She came back uptight with a pint tub of ice cream clutched in each hand and grinning. Oliver glanced into her cart, there were already three tubs piled near the front.

He raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

Kara offered him a smile that didn’t fully reach her eyes.

“Here, let me,” With the bascket overfull with alcohol hung over his wrist, Oliver stepped around and took the handlebar of the cart.

It had been oddly reflexive. Oliver wasn’t even entirely sure why he had done it. Another flicker of memory tumbled through his mind; him pushing a cart in that same store, Kara sat on the handlebar and distracting him with a lowcut top on perfect eyelevel. Oliver rolled his head and pushed the flicker aside. In a way that he didn’t know how to express properly, he wanted to spend more time with her.

“That was my last lot,” Kara put the new cartons of ice cream on top of the pile. “I need to check out.”

Oliver offered her a wan smile, and began to push the trolley in the direction of the checkout. Neither of them said anything as they unloaded Kara’s trolley and let the cashier total it up. There was a strange sense of embarrassment volleying in the space between them. They hadn’t so much as laid eyes on one another in almost a decade and now they were stood buying groceries together like they were teenagers again. Every few moments one of them would open their mouths as if to say something, then fall silent again.

Oliver heaved up his overload of alcohol onto the conveyor.

“Together or separate?” The cashier asked.

“Together.” Oliver answered at the same time as Kara said the opposite.

She fixed him with a stare that he vividly remembered, she still knew him too well. “Oliver, you don’t have to…”

“I’m not,” Oliver cracked a grin and fished out the jet black card from Tommy’s wallet. “Tommy is.”

Kara smiled then too.

_XXX_

Surprise wasn’t something Oliver was accustomed to. He’d been in the public eye almost since birth, raised in what a generous person would call an eccentric family, and shot to international stardom in his early twenties. Kara Danvers continually proved to be an exception to that. Seeing her again was a shock to his system he hadn’t expected.

She had been the first thing on his mind when they stopped in Midvale. How could she not have been? But there was no eventuality in which he had expected to stumble into her on the one night stop they had planned. He had tried exceptionally hard not to keep track of her, something that would have been incredibly easy with the Queen Family resources. But he had assumed she would have moved on from Midvale, headed into the city like she had always planned and become a big journalist like Clark.

He had expected her to have a family of her own, even if the idea spat bile into the back of his throat.

Seeing that her car was a generic, silver mini-van stirred that in the back of his mind in a way that almost made him reach for the scotch.

In silence the two of them loaded up the groceries into the back of the mini-van. The complete lack of noise bit hard into Oliver. As much as he knew it was probably the right thing to do, Oliver couldn’t just let Kara walk away without trying to talk to her properly. Resolving to say something, _anything_ , to spend just a little longer with her, Oliver shock his head to brush off the residual awkwardness and…

“Do you want to get a drink?” Kara got there first, but there was something odd in her eyes as she said it.

“I-uh,” Oliver swallowed hard. “All of the two bars around here were shuttered up when we arrived. I think this snow has everyone running scared.”

“Amateurs.” Kara grinned. “You’ve got enough drink there to take out a football team. I can tell Tommy’s in town.”

It was Oliver’s turn to smile. “I’m sure they won’t miss a few cans.”

Oliver followed Kara’s lead as she hopped into the car, and clambered into the passenger seat. From his rucksack, Oliver pulled out the six pack he had bought with Diggle in mind. It was closer to the Budweiser that Clark and hooked Kara on than the craft beer. Anyone else, and Oliver might have questioned them drinking and driving, but Kara had always had an inhumanly high tolerance for alcohol. Popping two cans free of the plastic rings, he passed one over to Kara, then cracked open his own.

“So, how’s Alex?” Oliver asked, for somewhere to start.

“She’s good,” Kara opened her can and took a sip. “She’s in the FBI now.”

Oliver’s eyes went wide for a second. “Bullshit. Alex? I thought she was in med school?”

“She was,” Kara smiled. “She ended up specialising in forensic medicine, got snapped up by the FBI a few weeks after she was qualified.”

Oliver thought about the Alex he had known. Like Oliver, she was two years older than Kara, and had been almost as much as a party animal as Oliver himself once she left for university. On a number of New Years parties at the Queen house in Midvale, he and Alex had gotten recklessly drunk together and Kara had ended up taking care of them. The FBI was the last place he could have pictured the woman he had known ending up.

“That’s…not where I saw Alex ending up.” Oliver said truthfully.

“Me neither,” Kara said. “But it makes sense. When we were kids she always did want to help people as much as she could. She’s always been protective of the people she cares about.”

That was underselling it, but Oliver left it unsaid.

“Well then,” He raised up his can. “To better days, when we were naïve and innocent.”

“To the people it helped us become.” Kara tapped her can against his.

For a moment, they both fell silent again. The only noise they could hear was the swirling wind outside.

“So, tell me how things have been with you?” Oliver asked eventually.

Kara sucked in her cheeks for a while as she thought her answer over.

“I got married.”

Oliver had to vie for control of his face so that his bitter disappointment didn’t show. Of all the things he had expected from her, that had been at the top of his list. Kara was too good a person, too amazing a human being, not to have gotten married. There wasn’t a person who met her that didn’t fall under her spell.

“Congratulations.” Oliver’s voice sounded strained even to his own ears.

Kara gave him a half-smile. “I’m not sure I’d go that far,” There was something close to regret that Oliver picked out in her voice. “I’d like to say I loved him but…”

There was a slight crack in her voice at the end and Kara trailed off. Oliver didn’t need to press it. As long as he had known Kara there had been one thing about her that stood above all else. She compulsively told the truth, she was practically incapable of lying. Oliver on the other hand lied better than most people. Just one of the ways they had complimented each other.

“The years have been a better friend to you than to me,” Oliver smiled at her, idly scratching at the beard on his jaw and doing his best not to think of the scars that adorned his chest. “Your eyes still look like you’ve trapped starlight in them.”

Kara ducked her head for a moment, a faint blush tickling at her cheeks. Why that had come out of his mouth unbidden was beyond Oliver. Almost a decade since running away, he thought the protocol for talking to an ex-girlfriend probably didn’t include flirting. When she looked back up it him, Oliver couldn’t tell if it was doubt or gratitude he saw in the blueness of her eyes.

“I keep seeing you guys on iTunes, can’t stay out of the top charts. You always did need to be the centre of attention.” Kara smiled wryly.

Oliver barked out a laugh. “That was always Tommy, not me.”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself, Queen,” Kara’s smile didn’t faulter. “How is everything with the band?”

“I still love the audience. God they make it worth it,” Oliver felt a familiar rush of warmth at the sentiment. “But the travelling is a killer. I miss the days when we just played local.”

Kara sipped her drink. “You were always destined for great things, Oliver.”

He didn’t voice the thought that ran through his mind. That he would have settled for obscurity in a moment if it meant he had been able to keep at Kara’s side. That ever since he had left her Oliver had never been himself again, and had buried himself in booze and recklessness so that he could ignore the gaping hole in his chest.

“Even if people say you can be an asshole.”

“I’ll have you know those rumours are grossly exaggerated.” Oliver chuckled. “And I’ve never once thrown anything at our tech guys. It’s Tommy I throw shit at.”

They laughed again, gravitating towards each other almost on reflex.

“And what about you, Oliver?”

“What about me?”

“Well I hear all sorts of rumours about you in the press,” Kara said, and Oliver ignored the way she said _the press_ as if she wasn’t including herself in that. “Have you met anyone?”

Oliver scoffed. “No, nothing serious. I’m not exactly built for relationships.”

“That’s ridiculous, Oliver,” Kara rolled her eyes. “Everyone is _built_ for relationships.”

“Not the Queen’s.”

Kara fixed him with a pointed look. “Thea’s married with a kid.”

That stirred something in the back of Oliver’s mind. Thea and Roy had been spending holidays at the Midvale house ever since their daughter Lian had been born. Three years Oliver had been wanting to ask Thea if she had seen Kara and fought down the urge to do so. In all the stories Thea had told him about those holidays, she hadn’t so much as hinted that she had seen Kara. Oliver didn’t blame her for keeping quiet.

“Maybe it’s just this Queen then.”

Kara finished off the dregs of her can. In some unspoken game, they had been drinking every time one of them had seemed uncomfortable, or awkward. Kara glanced at the blinking clock in the dashboard, and Oliver felt his phone vibrate in his pocket again, no doubt Tommy was wondering where his beer was.

“I need to get home.” Kara spoke softly. “Do you—”

“I can walk.” Oliver cut over her.

“Okay.”

The last moments they spent together were in complete silence.

Oliver’s mind raced through a hundred different things he could say. All of it was futile. Oliver owed it to Kara to leave it all unsaid. Once already he had run away and hurt her. If he told her that after all that time she still held his heart in her hands and walked away again, while she was _married_ , it would have been selfish. Once before he had taken that choice out of her hands and left her in the guise of selflessness. That time, Oliver knew it was right to stay quiet.

He didn’t want to get out of the car. He didn’t want to go back to the house with Tommy and the others. He wanted to stay with Kara. He wanted to reach across the gap and kiss her. To cup her face and run his hands through that golden blonde hair. He wanted to know if her lips still tasted the same.

He didn’t do any of it. Life wasn’t a fairy-tale. He didn’t get the girl just because he wanted her. Kara had moved on

For a long minute Oliver and Kara sat, looking into each other’s eyes. Then, Kara leant across the gap and kissed his cheek.

“Goodbye, Oliver.” 

Oliver swallowed hard, and reached for the door handle.

“Goodbye, Kara.”

Without looking back, Oliver pushed the door open and stepped out into the snow. As the door slammed shut, Oliver hefted the rucksack further onto his shoulder and zipped up his leather jacket. He stood stationary as the engine rumbled to life and the taillights of Kara’s mini-van disappeared into the distance.

Kara was going back to the family and life that she had.

Oliver was going back to his friends and a reckless hangover.

As he turned on one heel to head back to this house, the snow turned into rain.

**Author's Note:**

> As always this wasn't proofread so feel free to point out any mistakes for me to correct them.


End file.
